Asylum Children

A mother's legal battle to stop the Government deporting her sick, three-year-old daughter threatens to shame Britain over its treatment of child asylum-seekers in a test case being considered by the European Court of Human Rights.

Federal immigration agents were searching a house in Ohio last month when they found a young Honduran woman nursing her baby.

The woman, Saída Umanzor, is an illegal immigrant and was taken to jail to await deportation. Her 9-month-old daughter, Brittney Bejarano, who was born in the United States and is a citizen, was put in the care of social workers.

Crawley, who is now a senior lecturer and director of the Centre for Migration Policy Research at Swansea University, has just completed a comprehensive study on age assessments of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children for the Immigration Law Practitioners' Association and will be talking on the subject at a Community Care conference in July.